New Bushwalk Inventory System

[Son of a Beach]

The new Bushwalk Inventory System is now up and running and ready for any site members here to use. As the new blurb at the top of the 'Equipment' forum says: The online Bushwalk Inventory System can help bushwalkers with a variety of bushwalk planning tasks, including: Manage which items they take bushwalking so that they do not forget anything they might need, plan meals for their walks, and automatically compile food/fuel shopping lists (lists of consumables) required to make and cook the meals for each walk. It is particularly useful for planning for groups who share food or other items, but is also useful for individual walkers.

I know that some people have their own systems for managing their bushwalks and making sure they have all the gear/food/etc they need for each walk (eg, a good memory), but this tool works well for me (I have a terrible memory), and I'm sure it could work well for many others - especially if you ever get out bush and find you've forgotten to pack something essential!

There is a complete user manual for the system which is always accessible from the navigation bar near the top of any page in the system. NB: Before the system can be of any use to new users, they must follow the brief and simple instructions in the Initial Setup section of the user guide.

Note that this is a new system, so if you come across bugs or have any other problems using or understanding it, please let me know (after checking the user guide first). Any feedback on the new system is welcome.

Also, a big thanks to those who helped beta test the system with me!

[Son of a Beach]

From the User Guide, the following information provides a little more of an introduction to the system.


For the purposes of this system, some terms are defined below:

Inventory: A list of equipment that can be taken on bushwalks, excluding consumables such as food and stove fuel. A single inventory can be used for many bushwalks.

Meal Plan: A list of meals for a specific bushwalk, including which day of the walk each meal is for and what will be eaten for that meal.

Walk: A combination of the items from an inventory, plus a meal plan for a specific bushwalk. A list of consumables (food and fuel) is automatically derived from the meal plan for each walk and can also be used as a shopping list. A walk is used only once for a specific bushwalk on a specific date, and each walk uses only one inventory and has one meal plan (consisting of several meals).

The system includes the following features:

• Multiple custom inventories for each person (ie, list of gear to take on walks)
• Multiple walks for each inventory
• Automatic generation of meal plans for each walk based on custom preferences for each meal of the day
• Customisable meal plans
• Automatic generation of shopping list for consumables (food and fuel) for each meal plan
• Caters for multiple people on each walk, and meal plans can include different meals for different people
• Automatically calculates amounts/numbers of each item required for each walk based on number of people and number of days using custom calculations for each item
• Automatically excludes overnight gear from walks of less than 2 days duration based on custom calculations for those items
• Automatically calculates the base pack weight for each inventory
• ...plus much more

[Son of a Beach]

Below, you can see what the system looks like when in use (note that I currently have only 1 inventory, but you can have more if you need different inventories for different types of walks).

Also, I've written up two of my previous walks (for demo purposes) and made them public. You can view them here:
http://bushwalk.com/inventory/walk.php?walk_id=25
http://bushwalk.com/inventory/walk.php?walk_id=26
Note that they both use the same inventory, and that the overnight gear is automatically excluded from the day walk, and automatically included in the 4 day walk.

Home page of the Bushwalk Inventory System. Inventories in the table at left, Walks in the table at right.

A demo walk (actually my real walk plan for the BWT 2nd Anniversary Get Together). Includes items to pack, food/ingredients/fuel/consumables to pack (automatically generated) and meal plan. I could optionally include notes for the walk (eg, route plan, transport arrangements, etc), but haven't bothered for this walk. See my other public walks linked above for what the notes can look like.

[Talus]

Looks good. I make my own with excel but this one is pretty snazzy. Thanks for the info

[Son of a Beach]

Naturally, different people have different preferences for how things should work. It's just come to my attention that some people would like the amounts next to items that each person should take (ie, items NOT marked as 'shared') to reflect the number for the entire party (ie, 3 packs are required for a party of 3 people), rather than having a blank amount (implying 1 - ie, 1 for each person).

I think that the gram counters may prefer to see the total number there, so that the gram count can include the total weight for the party? (I'm not a gram counter, so I'm just guessing).

I'm considering adding a preference that would allow the choice of how the amount should be displayed for these non-shared items. Either: 1. blank (ie, implying 1 per person), or 2. The number of people in the walking party (ie, the total number required for the group).

In either case, custom calculations can still be added to any items to override the default value.

Your comments and feeback on this would be appreciated. I'd be interested to hear which you'd prefer, and why. Then if I do go ahead, I can make a decision on: 1, if to create such a preference, and 2, what should be the default preference for new users.